The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
say, a waistcoat, and breeches open at the knees, and both loose, for
they were rather wanting to keep me cool than to keep me warm. I must
not omit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made; for if I was a
bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such as I made
very good shift with, and when I was out, if it happened to rain, the
hair of my waistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very dry.
After this, I spent a great deal of time and pains to make an umbrella;
I was, indeed, in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one;
I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the
great heats there, and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and
greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be
much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as
the heats. I took a world of pains with it, and was a great while
before I could make anything likely to hold: nay, after I had thought I
had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind:
but at last I made one that answered indifferently well: the main
difficulty I found was to make it let down. I could make it spread, but
if it did not let down too, and draw in, it was not portable for me any
way but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I
said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, the hair
upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off
the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the
weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest, and
when I had no need of it could close it, and carry it under my arm.
Thus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by
resigning myself to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon
the disposal of His providence. This made my life better than sociable,
for when I began to regret the want of conversation I would ask myself,
whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and (as I hope I
may say) with even God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than
the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?
CHAPTER X. TAMES GOATS
I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing
happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture
and place, as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides my
yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of
both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one
year’s provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my
daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make a
canoe, which at last I finished: so that, by digging a canal to it of
six feet wide and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost
half a mile. As for the first, which was so vastly big, for I made it
without considering beforehand, as I ought to have done, how I should
be able to launch it, so, never being able to bring it into the water,
or bring the water to it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was as a
memorandum to teach me to be wiser the next time: indeed, the next
time, though I could not get a tree proper for it, and was in a place
where I could not get the water to it at any less distance than, as I
have said, near half a mile, yet, as I saw it was practicable at last,
I never gave it over; and though I was near two years about it, yet I
never grudged my labour, in hopes of having a boat to go off to sea at
last.
However, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size of it was
not at all answerable to the design which I had in view when I made the
first; I mean of venturing over to the _terra firma_, where it was
above forty miles broad; accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted
to put an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. As I had
a boat, my next design was to make a cruise round the island; for as I
had been on the other side in one place, crossing, as I have already
described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in that little
journey made me very eager to see other parts of the coast; and now I
had a boat, I thought of nothing but sailing round the island.
For this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion and
consideration, I fitted up a little mast in my boat, and made a sail
too out of some of the pieces of the ship’s sails which lay in store,
and of which I had a great stock by me. Having fitted my mast and sail,
and tried the boat, I found she would sail very well; then I made
little lockers or boxes at each end of my boat, to put provisions,
necessaries, ammunition, &c., into, to be kept dry, either from rain or
the spray of the sea; and a little, long, hollow place I cut in the
inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun, making a flap to hang
down over it to keep it dry.
I fixed my umbrella also in the step at the stern, like a mast, to
stand over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off me, like an
awning; and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the
sea, but never went far out, nor far from the little creek. At last,
being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved
upon my cruise; and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage,
putting in two dozen of loaves (cakes I should call them) of
barley-bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice (a food I ate a good
deal of), a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder and shot for
killing more, and two large watch-coats, of those which, as I mentioned
before, I had saved out of the seamen’s chests; these I took, one to
lie upon, and the other to cover me in the night.
It was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign—or my
captivity, which you please—that I set out on this voyage, and I found
it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was not
very large, yet when I came to the east side of it, I found a great
ledge of rocks lie out about two leagues into the sea, some above
water, some under it; and beyond that a shoal of sand, lying dry half a
league more, so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea to
double the point.
When I first discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise,
and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out
to sea; and above all, doubting how I should get back again: so I came
to an anchor; for I had made a kind of an anchor with a piece of a
broken grappling which I got out of the ship.
Having secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore, climbing up a
hill, which seemed to overlook that point where I saw the full extent
of it, and resolved to venture.
In my viewing the sea from that hill where I stood, I perceived a
strong, and indeed a most furious current, which ran to the east, and
even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of it because
I saw there might be some danger that when I came into it I might be
carried out to sea by the strength of it, and not be able to make the
island again; and indeed, had I not got first upon this hill, I believe
it would have been so; for there was the same current on the other side
the island, only that it set off at a further distance, and I saw there
was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to do but to get
out of the first current, and I should presently be in an eddy.
I lay here, however, two days, because the wind blowing pretty fresh at
ESE., and that being just contrary to the current, made a great breach
of the sea upon the point: so that it was not safe for me to keep too
close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off, because of
the stream.
The third day, in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the
sea was calm, and I ventured: but I am a warning to all rash and
ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when I was not
even my boat’s length from the shore, but I found myself in a great
depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a mill; it carried my
boat along with it with such violence that all I could do could not
keep her so much as on the edge of it; but I found it hurried me
farther and farther out from the eddy, which was on my left hand. There
was no wind stirring to help me, and all I could do with my paddles
signified nothing: and now I began to give myself over for lost; for as
the current was on both sides of the island, I knew in a few leagues
distance they must join again, and then I was irrecoverably gone; nor
did I see any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no prospect
before me but of perishing, not by the sea, for that was calm enough,
but of starving from hunger. I had, indeed, found a tortoise on the
shore, as big almost as I could lift, and had tossed it into the boat;
and I had a great jar of fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen
pots; but what was all this to being driven into the vast ocean, where,
to be sure, there was no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand
leagues at least?
And now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make even
the most miserable condition of mankind worse. Now I looked back upon
my desolate, solitary island as the most pleasant place in the world
and all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but there
again. I stretched out my hands to it, with eager wishes—“O happy
desert!” said I, “I shall never see thee more. O miserable creature!
whither am I going?” Then I reproached myself with my unthankful
temper, and that I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what
would I give to be on shore there again! Thus, we never see the true
state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries,
nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is
scarcely possible to imagine the consternation I was now in, being
driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me now to be) into
the wide ocean, almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever
recovering it again. However, I worked hard till, indeed, my strength
was almost exhausted, and kept my boat as much to the northward, that
is, towards the side of the current which the eddy lay on, as possibly
I could; when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I thought I
felt a little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from SSE. This
cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about half-an-hour
more, it blew a pretty gentle gale. By this time I had got at a
frightful distance from the island, and had the least cloudy or hazy
weather intervened, I had been undone another way, too; for I had no
compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered
towards the island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather
continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread
my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of
the current.
Just as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away,
I saw even by the clearness of the water some alteration of the current
was near; for where the current was so strong the water was foul; but
perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate; and presently I
found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some
rocks: these rocks I found caused the current to part again, and as the
main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving the rocks to the
north-east, so the other returned by the repulse of the rocks, and made
a strong eddy, which ran back again to the north-west, with a very
sharp stream.
They who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the
ladder, or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who
have been in such extremities, may guess what my present surprise of
joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of this eddy; and